


If a tree falls in a forest...

by Ptolemia



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Pre-Canon, Rated For Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 07:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3888463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ptolemia/pseuds/Ptolemia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>... and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? From a tumblr prompt to write about what effect (if any) Astareal would have on a deaf Abhorsen. This is a short story about the birth of a Paperwing, the woman who built it, and the cousin she raised. And about family, death, and Mogget sitting on people's heads to annoy them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If a tree falls in a forest...

“If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?” That’s the first question of yours that Mogget ever answers. Sound has always been somewhat fascinating to you, being deaf and young and full of interest in the unknown and the unknowable, but in truth you aren’t all that interested in that specific conundrum; you just want to get some sort of response out of the smug little creature who has spent the year since you arrived at your cousin’s house alternating between ignoring you entirely and filching the best bits of food off your plate.

“No,” he says, and then he follows it up with something else that you can’t quite make out - it’s really very difficult to lip-read a cat. You ask him to repeat himself, but no luck. He ambles off and slips through a crack in the wall of the rose garden that you are almost certain hadn’t been there before.

So you take the question to your cousin, who is, as usual, hunched over one of the wings of her strange charter-beast, tiny marks fizzing along the edge of her fingers and curling along the paper like sparks after a blaze. She does not look up as you approach. Like Mogget’s contrariness and the Charter-servant’s indifference, this is usual to you.

“Cousin,” you say, “Can I ask you a question?”

She twists herself around just enough for you to see her mouth, brow creased in frustration, palms still clutching a great paper flight-feather. “No.”

“But-”

She shakes her head. “Come here, hold the other end of this. And keep it still!”

You do as she commands, clutching at the tip of the great feather, small arms supporting smaller hands which grip awkwardly at the strange surface which is at once paper and not paper – smooth and dry but humming with that gentle whispering vibration peculiar to charter magic. And then you flinch as your cousin bats your hands aside.

“Not there! You’ll hurt her!”

“You hurt me,” you grumble, glaring up at her. With her hook nose and her grey-streaked parchment blonde hair, she looks more like the charter-beast’s cousin than yours.

“Nonsense,” she says, “I’m just showing you how to be delicate with her. Now, hold this up to the other feathers. There! Now stay still.”

“Cousin,” you say, “If a tree falls in a forest and-”

“It makes a sound,” she snaps, before you can finish your question.

“How do you know?”

“I just do. Hold still. And stay quiet, for goodness’ sake.”

 

You frown, but you do as she says. After all, it is always a strange and wonderful thing to see your cousin sing. And sing she does, charter marks tumbling over her mouth and spilling through her fingers. You hear nothing, of course, but you have grown to know those marks. One for speed, and another for endurance, and one for catching the bold north wind. And ones for other things, too, strange old alien things like love and motherhood and the warmth of a hearth to fly home to at the end of a long day. You are six, and your arms are tired from holding the weight of the great feather of the charter-beast, and you know nothing of any of these any of those three things, which are as distant and peculiar to you as the stars are to the rocks beneath your feet. So when you join your own voice to her song, you sing marks about cold nights and chill winds and the tangling dark that the woods clutch close at night. You have forgotten your cousin’s demand for your silence, and you never knew at all that your deafness might be considered an impediment to song. Why should it be? You are the Abhorsen-in-waiting. You know sound like a bird knows flight. It hums through your fingers, it tumbles through your bones, it shakes its way through your soul. What does it matter to you if you cannot hear it? You feel it. And so you sing your melancholy little charter marks in a high, clear, pitch-perfect tone, and your cousin stares at you, aghast.

“Where on earth did you learn that?” she says, eyes wide, mouth agape, her own song dying as the question takes hold of her mouth.

“You sing a lot,” you say, “I learned from you.”

“No, no, not the singing, little one. All Abhorsen can do that, deaf or not. Where did you learn those marks?”

You shrug, confused. “I always knew them, I think.”

“They won’t do the charter-beast any good,” says your cousin. “They’ll make her sad.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighs, rubbing her brow with her free hand. “No, no, don’t be…” she sighs again, and puts the wing down. “I don’t want you to be sad, either. I’m not a very good mother, am I? To either of you.” She looks from you, to the charter-beast, to you again. “Are you cold?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Very.”

And then, for the first time since you met, your cousin picks you up and hugs you. She leans back a little so you can see the words. “Well then, little cousin, would you like to come and get some food?”

You smile and nod, and she smiles back at you. It doesn’t suit her face, but she’s trying, and that makes you glad. “We can name the charter-beast, if you like,” she says, as you head off to the kitchen. The waiting soup will be cold as ever, and layered with a fine scum of charter-marks where the servants have been dipping their fingers in it when they think nobody can see, but for once you think you might be looking forward to it.

You name the charter-beast Paperwing, and your cousin never lets it drop that given all the names in the world, you chose something as dull as that.

But she never chooses to change the name, either, and that - well, that is what love is about.

 

****

 

In the years it takes for your cousin to finish the Paperwing, the question drifts to the back of your mind. You are busy, growing and changing and learning a great many new things. The Paperwing is doing the same. Your cousin sings to it most days. Sometimes she lets you join in, but most often she just sits out there alone in the garden, singing away softly to herself. And at some point you realise that she is no longer singing to herself at all – there is a glitter in the eyes of the Paperwing that was not there before. A fragile, fluttering spark that might easily blow out if left unattended, but it is there. And the two of them, your cousin and her strange charter child, sit out on the lawn amidst sun and snow and rain and singing. And on the day when you first notice the gleam in the Paperwing’s eye, a strange suspicion leads you out onto the lawn to run your hand along the fuselage of the beast. Faintly, faintly, you feel a fluttering vibration under your fingertips.

“She’s singing back!” you gasp.

Your cousin smiles, a little wanly. “She’s growing up, little one.” And then she draws the smallest bell from her bandolier, and regards it carefully for a moment before striding off around the Paperwing, ringing out a steady figure of eight. She yawns, but you feel nothing. You watch, and you contemplate, and that night you stay up late, wondering what the use of the bell means.

 

****

 

The next day you sleep in late, and when you awake your cousin is gone from the garden. You go down to the Paperwing, and run your hands along its side, and through your fingers you feel the thrum of a great old Charter of Wakening. And you are intrigued.

 

****

 

Your cousin runs laps around the Paperwing, legs dancing, Kibeth ringing in her hand, and you think that for the first time she does not look so very in control. And you think, yes, you were right, yesterday while you slept she was playing the tune of Mosrael. And tomorrow…

 

****

 

Dyrim. It is Dyrim, the bell you have always loved the most, and yet today you are struck by growing unease to see it ring out in your cousins hand. Normally you love to hold her hand while she plays that bell, and feel the trembling soprano of its lovely voice ring out through your palm. But today you stay in the house, and you are afraid.

 

****

 

Belgaer. The Paperwing has such bright shining eyes, you think. But your cousin has her back to you, and you cannot see if hers are yet grown dull.

 

****

 

Today, when your cousin is done ringing Saraneth, you step out of the house and onto the patio to meet her before she can slip past you.

“What next,” you say, clutching at her hand, “What is the next bell?”

“You have read the book,” she says, with a sad little smile.

“You cannot leave me all alone,” you plead.

“Everything has its time, little one. And you are maybe not so little any more. A woman, soon, just like my Paperwing will be.”

“Cousin-”

She kisses your forehead and smiles. “She will fly without the final mark, little one. But she won’t be a woman grown until she knows of death.”

“And when will that be?”

Your cousin shakes hear head. “Nobody ever has any answers to questions like that. Not any you would find satisfaction in, anyway. You shouldn’t ask such things.”

“Yes you should.”

“Why so?”

“Because some questions have value in their own right.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears,” you say, “Does it make a sound?”

“Hmm. That is a good point, little one.” She begins to walk past, then turns back for a moment, looking out beyond you and into the sunlit garden. “Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”

And then she is gone.

 

****

 

You get an answer to all three questions, and, as your cousin rightly told you, none of them are satisfying.

You are outside the house, sat waiting by the Paperwing for your cousin to return from an errand, and Mogget is beside you, putting an inordinate amount of effort into looking nonchalant.

“Mogget,” you say, “Whatever was it that you answered to that question about the tree, all those years ago?”

He licks his paw. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

“The question about the tree falling in the forest.”

He sighs. “Oh, yes, the boring one.”

“You still answered it.”

“That was because I was very bored myself.”

“Are you bored now?”

“In your presence? Yes, always.”

“Well, will you answer my question again?”

He flicks his tail. “Very well. I said no. It does not make a sound. A sound is only the perception of vibrations by a living being, so if there is nothing there to hear, there is no sound.”

You consider this. “What if somebody was aware without hearing it, though? What if I was there? I can’t hear, but I could tell that the tree was falling anyway.”

“If you could tell it was falling it would be making a sound, then,” says Mogget, but he looks marginally less sure of himself than before.

“But I can’t hear sound.”

He swats you with his paw. “Stop being boring.”

“But-”

He pricks his ears up. “Shh. Where is the Abhorsen?”

“Stop trying to change the subject!”

“Shh!”

“You’re only sore that your answer wasn’t any good, you silly-”

That is when you see the gore-crows circling, and you freeze.

“Oh how  _perfect_ ,” hisses Mogget. “I knew there was more to this than she imagined.”

You stare into the woods, heart juddering in your chest, eyes straining. “Shall I call for her?”

“Do you want to draw every dead thing for a mile toward you?” says Mogget, trotting off a little way to inspect a beetle.

You stay silent.

And you sit.

And you wait.

 

The gore crows circle, and the sun begins to dip down the sky. Mogget gets bored with the beetle, and sits on your head for a while. When you do not react, he goes and lies on his back in the shade, and glares at you.

“By the way,” he says, presently, “The Abhorsen is in the woods, shouting at you to get in the Paperwing.”

You jump to your feet, and leap toward the forest. Mogget bites your ankle. You glance down at him, impatient. “I have to help her!”

“Really, I’d love to see you do that, I would. Your death at the mercy of several hundred hands, a good dozen greater dead and the most powerful necromancer I have come near in a hundred years would doubtless bring me endless amusement. But I cannot fly the strange paper charter bird creature-”

“Paperwing,” you interject, almost without thinking.

“- and I feel like my death immediately following yours would rather curtail any amusement I might otherwise enjoy,” he finishes, ignoring your comment. “Fly me home.”

“I can’t leave her! She’s my cousin!”

Mogget bites your ankle again, so you kick him (which is  _probably_  not that cruel of you because he  _probably_  doesn’t feel pain like real cats do) and keep running for the woods.

And that is when your cousin breaks free of the trees, bell in hand. There are things behind her, and around her, and one arm is hanging off her by a sinew, and her face is almost gone and she is aflame, she is aflame, and the woods are burning too and there is a terrible creature now reaching the treeline, and the creature is not aflame because it  _is_  flame. You are stuck, still, silent, alone. And as the creatures drag your cousin backward, the burning remnants of her mouth call out to you. There’s no sound to come out, because her throat is almost gone now, but you do not know that. And you can lipread better than anybody, and so you see the shape of the words as clear as if she were stood next to you in the garden back at home.

“GET IN THE PAPERWING. FLY. FLY!”

Mogget, you might have ignored, but your cousin you trust above all others. She has the last bell, the greatest bell, aloft in her hand. If this is her time, then it is her time, and so you stumble and scream your way toward the cockpit, and then…

 

And then the bell tolls, and you are tripping from grass to water, and slipping.

You go under, and you do not know which way is up.

Around you there are others, whirling and tumbling.

Waterfalls.

Fire.

Ice.

Above all there is a deep and unforgiving rumble, down at the bottom of your soul. You don’t hear the sound, but by the Charter, you feel it.

You finally catch a breath when the water gets shallow again. You retch, you gasp, you wipe your bleary eyes and wonder where you are and how you-

Stars.

There are stars above you.

You are pierced through by fear, transfixed by what it is that you have read of this last gate. Around you, you are aware, things are rising upward, and never coming back. The stars, you know, are singing. But the stars do not have mouths, and you cannot see the words. You feel it, though, the rumble in your chest of that final bell, and you think, well, there’s your answer – although what the question was, you aren’t entirely sure.

Then, you feel something nudge your arm, and look down, astonished. It is Mogget. But your eyes are being drawn back already to the stars.

“Sing!” he says, “Sing, you fool!”

There’s a snap to the way he moves his mouth, a command, and dazed as you are, you obey. You sing. You sing about strange old alien things like love and motherhood and the warmth of a hearth to fly home to at the end of a long day. And suddenly that is all that you can feel rumbling through your chest. Astrael is loud, and the stars are loud, but that means nothing to you, because you cannot hear the sound, only vibrations, and your heart is rumbling to its own tune. You cannot feel the tremble of any other music any more.

You pick yourself up, and then, because he demands it and he says that water will make his fur coarse, you pick Mogget up too, and go striding off up the river.

“You remind me,” says Mogget, “Of somebody I once knew. Perhaps you are her, in a way. Bright shiners, shining on through the dark… I forget too much. I remember too much.” He doesn’t look much like a cat for a moment, but as you sing your way back out into the sunlight, he takes on his normal form once more.

The Paperwing is crying, and there are new charter marks in the tears that stain along its side. Sad ones, but maybe important ones too.

“You are a woman grown, now,” you say, solemnly. “Today is the day.”

The Paperwing stares balefully at you.

“No,” you say, “I don’t find that answer very satisfactory either. She was quite right. She was always right.”

And you shuffle into the cockpit, and run your hands along the sides. Your fingers glow with charter marks, glittering and shining as though the one who made them was still alive and bright and walking in the sunlight.

“Mogget,” you say, “Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”

“And now you remind me of somebody else I knew once,” he grumbles, “Who liked walking altogether more than is healthy. Walking is for dogs, and dogs are vulgar. I won’t have any part in such silly questions. Let us fly home, like normal people.”

And so you get your third unsatisfactory answer, which, when you get down to it, isn’t much of an answer at all. You whistle up the wind, and take off, soaring up above the forest and the death and the carnage, and you and the Paperwing go home lonely but not quite alone, two children of a woman who was last of her line.

Only Mogget, looking out behind at the woods, sees the tree fall.

He is too far away to hear if it makes a sound or not, and, being a cat above all things, finds that he does not really care.


End file.
